Time Magainze published a short article titled, Carly Fiorina: The Man-made Water Shortage in California – a flaming piece of Fiorina-produced propaganda placing the blame for California’s water situation on protection of the Sacramento river smelt. Her point, not even implied point, is that “liberals,” in protecting the river smelt, have prevented California from taking action that would have prevented its present drought condition – well, not the drought itself, but the resultant shortage of water for use by people would have been prevented if we’d just not protected the smelt.

Hmmmm…. Seem a little too simple to you?

It’s BS. The smelt did nothing to increase water consumption in California beyond the State’s available natural resources. Its the people not the smelts Carly,

Population growth greater than what the native water supply in CA can sustain has been the issue since the arrival of Europeans. The problem is not new, and it’s not the smelts. It’s the size of the population and for what we, the people, use water that is the issue.

Does the CA legislature have a hand in this? You bet. Do the “liberals” (assuming only liberals care for the environment and preservation of species)? You bet. Do the “conservatives” (assuming only conservatives are financially-motivated developers ever-inching up demand on water resources)? You bet. EVERYONE has a hand and EVERYONE is impacted.

What government CAN do is leverage the legislative and executive bodies to create policies that encourage desired behavior and enforce the prevention of undesired behavior.

I was in Mexico when I wrote this, barely able to breath for the uncontrolled automobile exhaust emissions. Though there are far more cars in Los Angles than in this little part of Mexico (San Carlos del Cabo), the U.S. State and Federal government imposed and enforced legislation regulating the emissions of vehicles makes L.A. air breathable. When Mexico decides to do the same, the air there will improve as well.

Water is a shared and scarce resource like air – but more precious as the replenishment cycle for water is far, far, longer.

It’s up to us – not Carly Fiorina, not the “liberals,” not the “conservatives,” – but us, the citizens, to demand legislation coupled with enforcement that will enable California to prosper in ways consistent with our supplies of scarce, shared, water resources.

Last month, @CBS Bay Area wrote about Silicon Valley’s Jonathan Hart (@jonathanhartsf), lead mobile engineer for Idle Games, who hacked into the Burning Man servers to snag tickets ahead of the 80,000 people waiting in line – then tweeted about it leading to some 200 more of similar morality doing the same.

Is there a “New Morality”
in Silicon Valley?

Everyone knows that “team” is important. Every venture capitalist will tell you “we invest in teams.” We all seek to hire “team players” and to “be on the same team.” Search Google for ‘”the importance of team’ (intentional open quote to capture ‘teamwork’ for example) and you’ll get 477,000,000 hits – 477 million!

“Team” is an essential element of success. But what is team exactly? What are the elements of team?

The 2013 All Blacks most experienced team in their history with the most well-drilled front row in world rugby.

OK, I’m not a millennial. And like everyone else who is ‘old’ – lets say 30’s and up, can no longer read micro-fonts of light colors on backgrounds of slightly lighter colors. The pale orange on white color scheme of Swarm is impossible to read in daylight without specs. IMHO, stupid. People check in all over the world in all kinds of conditions. Using pale orange on white is a 20-something design decision. That’s fine if you want to cut out the +30’s market – I get it. But if you don’t, and want to include the part of your 50M+ subs that are +30’s, then your designers are not thinking.

Just yesterday another world record broken by a 16 year old., most swimmers (especially female) seem to retire in their early 20’s, yet for most other sports, athletes peak in their late 20’s.

It’s been a year, and since then I was fortunate to be on two national top-ten relays, and move from “speed club Bronze” to “speed club Silver” (oh that elusive Gold!) – which reminded me of this post which is worth sharing again for my aging friends (and yes, we are all aging 🙂